WoW Gamer Earns Federal Investigation Achievement

barnyjr writes "A teenager could face federal charges after investigators say he made online threats to kill Americans on a plane from Indianapolis to Chicago. According to investigators, a monitor of the online interactive game World of Warcraft saw the alleged threats in an on-line chat and called Johnson County authorities. She told investigators the chatter didn't seem like a game." I'm not sure who's crazier, this guy or the guy who just became the first World of Warcraft player to rack up 10,000 achievement points.

Comments

Noob

[Anonymous Coward]

See what participating in Barrens chat will get you?

No second chances...

[TiberSeptm]

..for poorly thought-out sentences hastily said/typed/written.

I really wish law enforcement, school officials, and the courts handled the fine gradiations between "stupid stuff kids say," "stupid stuff people, who should know better but apparently don't, say" and "real threats" better than they do. I remember a friend of mine getting suspended in elementary school for saying "I wish you would die" to someone who had been bullying them. Obviously the teary eyed little girl posed a real and imminent threat to the other kid who had at least 30 lbs on her. Then there was the guy in my freshman (high school) english class who was expelled and arrested for some poorly thought out sarcasm. The teacher had sent him to the in-school-suspension trailer for arguing with her about her grading policies. He was still pissed and was insulting her loudly as he left when she said something to the effect of "I feel like I've got the next unibomber right here. I hate watching little psychos like you go through here just knowing what you'll probably become." In response to this ridiculous thing for a teacher to say to a 14 year old student, he said "Oh right, like I'm going to put bomb in your mailbox or something. Are you f-ing nuts?"

Despite the fact that she had provoked him, that everyone in the class had attested to this and stated it was clear he was being sarcastic, he was still arrested for making threats and expelled from the county school district. I really wish our institutions were better at reacting appropriately to stuff like that. Maybe if they could tell real threats from stupid remarks we would be a lot safer from both the mentally unbalanced seeking to do us harm and our government's hamfisted attempts to look like it's doing something.

Re:No second chances...

[eiMichael]

Zero-Tolerance.

That's the word of the times. Even though with these policies we still had V-Tech, and other school shootings. It's all security theater to make the ignorant, distracted parents feel like their kids are safe. They'd rather hear terms like "zero-tolerance" than "after investigation that sarcastic remark made to your child was just that, sarcastic and hollow with no intention of following through with the threat."

Whooops!

[WiiVault]

Should have tried this last year, before he was 18.

Re:Watch Your Trash Talk!

[Opportunist]

They had to. After the fifth person was sent to the mental ward, not even money could convince any sane, normal person that monitoring 4chan is worth the price. :)